Did I miss anything? Not much in all honesty, but let me try to catch you up. Since Christmas I’ve been on the lam. No, not really, just busy with holiday plans, family, my real job, and a fun trip to the coast that I’ll post a course review from later. If you follow me on Twitter, you already know most of the details of my trip. The main thing is that I’m back now and posts will continue as normal. It’s no coincidence that I’m back on the 1st day of 2014 that the tour is back.

Callaway Struck Gold

In club company news, it appears Callaway inked two hired guns to their stable of players. The Carlsbad based company signed 2013 Fed Ex Champion Henrik Stenson and 2 time winner on tour, Harris English. This continues Callaway’s trend of marketing big hitters with their products or vice versa. Their group already includes Nicolas Colsaerts and Gary Woodland. This is also the same company that put X-Bombs on their players staff bags in 2013 for hitting 300 and 400 yard drives.

For English it is a move that makes sense. I think Callaway can raise his profile. For Stenson, well…..I’m not sure I’d tweak my equipment this much when I’m ranked as high as he is and playing as well as he is.

Rors Takes The Plunge

In other news from around the world of golf, Rory McIlroy popped the question to his highly ranked professional tennis playing girlfriend, Caroline Wozniacki, and she said yes. No, the question wasn’t “will you have plastic surgery?”. Rors-niacki got engaged.

This was somewhat shocking to those of us that wrote of the demise of the relationship just 3 short months ago. Congratulations to the couple. This will be interesting to follow. I think Rory being so smitten with her and spending the time to travel to watch her play really hurt his game last year, well…..that and his shitty Nike equipment. Will being engaged and prepping for a wedding have the same impact? Time will tell. It might also settle Rory down and be a huge plus for him.

Kapalua Starts It All

When the tour winners from the previous year gather in Maui after the new year those of us stranded in snow in the continental part of the country take notice and start tuning in to watch golf again in between NFL playoff games. The Tournament of Champions really does start the professional golf season no matter what the events played in October and November count for.

Unlike last year when the tourney was constantly delayed by high winds, round one was completed on Friday and when the dust settled the leaderboard showed a four way tie for first between Chris Kirk, Webb Simpson, Jordan Spieth, and Michael Thompson. Another group of four players trail by one shot including Jason Dufner and Kevin Streelman.

Streelman is apparently on a roll right now. His opening round included two eagles on the front nine. Kevin also became a father the day after Christmas. Here’s his tweet of the miracle he experienced.

God bless her for living such a tough life. Dustin is four back of the lead after round 1. He finished with a -3 round of 70 on Friday.

Site News

Johnson and Gretzky aren’t the only people celebrating an anniversary of sorts. ShutFaceGolf.com was launched a year ago this weekend. It’s been a delight to see the following of the site grow and to hear from fans and critics alike about the site. I’ve received far more positive feedback than negative and therefore I will continue to plow forward to provide you with more takes, tomfoolery, and disgusting comments about players games, wives, girlfriends, and courses in 2014. I hope you continue the journey with me. Thanks again for reading.

Additionally, the dawn of 2014 means the Bitch-Tits-Tax-O-Meter is dead. I’m going to take it down in the coming days, but I don’t yet have any idea of what I’ll replace it with. I’m open to your suggestions and would love to read them in the comments below. Have at it. Happy New Year!